Survival, Not Victory
by nevthebunny
Summary: 'My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am eighteen years old.' Katniss reflects on all the games she has played in. On Gale and Peeta and on victory. Inspired by the end of Mockingjay, not the epilogue. Katniss/Peeta.


**A/N So I finished Mockingjay today and this is what happened. Enjoy **

_My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am eighteen years old. My home is District Twelve. I love Peeta Mellark. I won the Hunger Games. They call me a victor._

I watch him intently across the table as I do every day. I'm watching, like a hawk, assessing today's state. He had a bad spell last night which has certainly had an effect on his appearance. There is never any way to tell what a new dawn will bring for him.

His name is Peeta Mellark. He is eighteen years old. He may have won the Hunger Games but he is no victor, except in one respect. He has me.

He has me but for once in my life I don't have him. This man standing before me is not my Peeta Mellark. He is a man the Capitol carved out of hatred as a weapon, to burn me, to destroy me. He was only ever a piece in their games_:_ the one thing he didn't want to be. And now that could be all he will ever be.

There was a time when I never imagined I could love Peeta. A simpler time when the only important things were how to get food and Gale.

That is to say Gale Hawthorne, now twenty years old. He lives in District Two. Once upon a time he loved me. I loved him.

My role was to be used in their games, just like Peeta, but Gale would have been much more suited to that. I was the spark; he was the fire. He was passion and anger and heat but at the same time he was cold, unfeeling hatred. He was everything and nothing and I know that perhaps it wasn't the Games that changed our relationship from co-existence to emptiness.

I give in to the old regime. I am looking at Peeta. I am thinking of Gale, his wild, untamed stability and comparing him with the strong and dependable unhinged man in front of me. With Peeta everything is different. He is the very definition of gentleness, kindness and reason. Or he was, anyway. With him I am reduced to the merest lost sheep with him as a dandelion.

I keep dandelions all around the house. I know they are weeds. They sneak up and choke the strongest, most powerful plants. They are a symbol of hope for me. I still study my enemy, target, victor, ally, friend, trying to figure him out. For the first time in weeks he looks me directly in the eyes. He smiles.

Suddenly I can see him, my Peeta Mellark: my hope when all else is lost. For everything is lost. They've played games with us to their hearts content. They call us victors, in the Capitol, but there are no victors in the Hunger Games. Nobody wins. Twenty four tributes go in and not one comes out. They broke us, turned us against each other into things that merely kill. That is why I belong with Peeta. I am broken and so is he. Broken in the same way, at the same time. Left alone because they know, everyone knows, that the only place we belong is with each other.

Gale took the broken girl from the arena and shaped her into a rebel. He took the spark and burnt it out. With Gale she would have become a blazing inferno, a killing machine. Peeta took a girl far less broken than himself, a former love, and shaped her into herself.

In their conversation last year they had been right. I chose the one who I needed to survive but it wasn't Gale who had helped me to survive all those years. It was Peeta, who helped my humanity to survive, that I needed.

"Hey, Katniss," he says. "They don't own us. They've never owned us. Real or not real?"

"Real," I whisper.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I see that that Peeta still lives on. He shines through, my beautiful beacon of hope. Peeta Mellark is proof that the Hunger Games have no victor. They have survivors.

**A/N This is heavily inspired by the end of chapter 27, which I didn't realise until I reread it (the fic, that is). I envisage the little scene between Peeta and Katniss happening before the scene in that (with 'You love me, real or not real?) though, at around the time they start their book. Please review **


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